Welcome to the new Extravision Reports

June 8, 2012

In the first of a series of posts about features of our latest Reports release, I wanted to start out by talking about the login screen and the main company overview screen. I'll be posting further articles shortly covering some areas in more detail. I know a login screen sounds a bit boring, but we've actually made a number of improvements to make your life easier, while still keeping the familar flow from the previous release. And that's just the start...

Firstly, Reports is now secured with SSL, as you can see from the HTTPS in the URL and the confirmation padlock near the address bar.

This means any data we send you, and anything you do on the site itself can't be intercepted by anyone else, to give you the best possible security for your data. You don't have to do anything different - if you enter the address without the 'https' will automaticaly upgrade you to the secure version.

We've also made it a lot easier to get in contact with us - either for a trial, to get some help, reset your password or simply to see what we're saying about email marketing or the site itself on Twitter. Just follow the links that sit around the main username and password box.

Once you've logged in, if you only have one company, next you'll be taken straight from here to the main dashboard, which I'll talk about later, but we know a lot of you have multiple companies and so the next thing you see after entering your password is the company selector.

This lets you select the company you are currently interested in, but also lets you set a favorite. This favorite company will be selected by default in the list the next time you login. This means you can quickly get to your most used company with just a single mouse click (or a press of 'enter' if you prefer).

If you do need to select a different one, you can just start typing and the chooser will jump to the first matching company. If you'd rather see an overview of your companies, click the arrow at the end of the box to see a drop down list you can pick from. You can change your favorite either when you login, or at any time from the 'My Settings' link with the application.

One you have logged in and selected a company, you'll see the main company overview screen. What we wanted to do here was give you a simple overview of what has happened recently in the company, and how the campaigns are performing generally. We also wanted some of the common tasks you need to do to be quicker and easier.

So, for instance, we show you a list of the last 5 campaigns sent prominently, because we know those are the ones you are most likely to be interested in. To save even more time if you just want to quickly see how a campaign has done we've put the most important indicators there as well. We've also color-coded the numbers from red to green so you really can just glance at the screen and see the state of play. Click one of these and you'll be taken into the campaign itself without needing to locate it in the main list on the left.

You can still select a particular campaign from the list of course, just as before, but we've added a search box so you can quickly find a particular campaign without having to open the right group or scroll though a list to find it.

The company screen also shows you a summary of the most important statistics, covering things like bounce and click rates as well as the most popular mail clients used to open the campaigns. The default period for the statistics is 3 months but this can be changed to whatever you prefer by selecting the dropdown next to the account statistics label.

A new tool for this screen is the event log. If you schedule many campaigns, it can be difficult to keep track of what is due to happen when, so we've added a calendar that highlights days when campaigns were sent or are due to be sent out. As well as using the arrows to move from month to month you can also type dates like 'jun 2011' or 'now' to return to the current month. Click a highlighted day to see the activity. You can also create simple reminders for anyone else who views this company in case you need to leave yourself a note.

If you need to return to this screen from somewhere else, just click on the logo in the top left corner, or close the current campaign using the icon in the side bar. This also refreshes the data in case you have a campaign that is currently receiving clicks. Also across the top of the application we have links that allow you to construct a new campaign, access links to our online help (including via email and Skype), update your details and of course logout.

So, why not jump in - your account details are unchanged, so just head on over to https://reports.extravision.com and start enjoying the new experience ! As always, please let us know what you love, or what you think we could do better.